Gone To Take The Air
by eleventy7
Summary: Draco never recovered afterwards and nor did Harry. HPDM.


Some days were average.

Some days were really bad.

He was never the same afterwards, was Draco Malfoy. Some said he got hit by a curse, that something Dark touched him. The Healers were forever on the scent of some grand miracle scheme, some obscure curse. But Harry Potter knew whatever demons inside Draco's head were of his own creation.

Demons.

That's what Draco yelled about sometimes in his little beige room with the window looking out onto a brick wall. They enchanted it each day to show different scenery, though Harry knew Draco never saw any of it. Just his demons. He'd be walking around shouting, raising a defiant fist to some invisible foe. "Demons, the demons," he'd say. Sometimes he shouted it like a curse. Sometimes he murmured it as one whispers a lover's name. Harry preferred the mindless shouting to the wretched whispers.

"Don't greet them," he'd tell Draco. "Don't greet them."

But Draco could not or would not hear him.

Sometimes the Healers tried to light the room if Harry was visiting at night. But Harry liked sitting in the dark, in the night. Sometimes he casted a glamour spell, darkening the room completely, giving it tiny pinpricks of starry light so it felt like they were floating through the galleries of space and time together. Draco liked that. He liked the darkness. When the Healers tried lighting candles, he would snuff them out one by one with calloused fingertips.

"There's darkness inside my head," he said. "So there should be darkness outside."

Harry liked it when Draco talked. Those were always the average days. On the very bad days he would just cry. Draco Malfoy never cried loudly but he didn't cry silently either. Just these long and mournful sobs coming from the darkest corner. Harry hated that, sitting in there listening to that endless, childlike weeping. Harry didn't put stars up those nights. Draco needed complete darkness to match his mind.

On the bad days he'd call it the whispering dark. "The whispering dark is inside my head," he'd say. On good days the darkness was silent, a malevolent shadow watching and waiting. Never sleeping, never dying.

Harry went home with his own darkness those nights, as though Draco had broken off a piece of shadow for Harry. Harry never slept those nights. He dreamed instead. About _that_ day.

* * *

Harry had tried talking about that day to Draco once. "I'm sorry," he said. "Please don't think that it was easy."

"The darkness," Draco said. "The darkness."

Harry had given up.

"Yeah, Draco," he said. "The darkness."

"The roses," Draco said and Harry's breath hitched. Draco had never spoken of roses before.

"Tell me about the roses, Draco," he said. "The roses. Train tracks. Do you remember the train tracks? The train," he said. "The train tracks, Draco, oh Merlin -" And then he'd buried his head in his hands. After a while Draco had tentatively taken one of Harry's hands.

"Please don't be sad," he said. "It makes it darker, the sadness -"

"Yeah, I know. Sorry," Harry had managed, giving the pale hand a squeeze. Draco had always had strong, certain hands. Now they were weak, fluttering like the broken wing of a bird. Helpless. Hopeless. The word had sprung into Harry's mind and he had pushed Draco away, fleeing, running back home like the coward he knew he was.

He hadn't cried. Not once in five years. Draco. Merlin.

They had been young, drunk, hopelessly in love. There was that word again. Hopeless. Harry remembered it. It was just after the Battle when everyone had been celebrating. Draco and Harry's eyes had met through Severus Snape's wineglass and that was it. They started laughing like they'd never stop, at the whole damn world and its stupidity. They drank til they were laughing and crying and couldn't tell the difference. They raced along the Hogsmeade train tracks, singing and laughing. They lay in dewy grass and made up stories about the stars. Draco plucked a white rose of its petals, sending them into the sky to make a new constellation, a galaxy of petals and pollen.

And they found a deserted playground, a set of swings. They threw themselves into the sky, wanting to be swallowed up by the whole glorious night, to remain in the moment forever, preserved in stars and joy. And Draco swung high into the sky and let go and for one stupid moment Harry thought he was actually flying.

But his body kept rising into the air, and then it jerked and twisted like a puppet on star-tangled strings and the mob had their wands out, oh Merlin, Harry saw them now, their boorish faces and pitted eyes and ugly mouths twisting and spitting out the word 'justice'. Muggleborns, come to kill the last and youngest Death-Eater.

Harry had reacted so slowly, taken so much time to realise what was happening. He had fallen, landed on his knees, he knew it must have hurt but it was nothing, nothing compared to the pain of Draco Malfoy, screaming and twisting far above him in the sky, a sick mockery of everything Harry had fought.

People had come running. Good people, decent people. But they were too late. A thousand candles would never bring light to the whispering darkness that filled his head. He had gone somewhere Harry couldn't follow.

* * *

And it had been five years now. Tonight, Draco had said a new word.

"Roses," he said and Harry had nodded tiredly. Draco often mentioned roses. He never bothered to elaborate though, never explained.

"Yeah," Harry said, touching Draco's hand. "The roses, hey."

"I love the roses," Draco said, his first new sentence in ages and Harry felt like he'd been punched in the stomach. Love. Oh, Merlin. That word, framed by Draco's thin, pale lips. Something in Harry broke. Love. Draco's new word.

He went home and cried for the first time in five years. Not for Draco, no. He cried for himself, for the night he fell in love with Draco Malfoy, with his wild gray eyes and strong hands and beautiful smile. One night and five years later here he was, sobbing uncontrollably into his robes, sick of being alone, filled with some kind of unnamed hurt. And he knew he would not return to that little beige room.

He told the Healers. He wondered if anyone would conjure white and lovely stars to keep Draco's darkness at bay.

* * *

And when he received the owl one week later he knew immediately what it was. Draco's death notice was sealed with black wax. Harry ran his fingers over the seal almost tenderly, feeling the dips and ridges, the rough edges. It was easy really, as if he'd known all along. As easy as uncorking the right vial and drinking until it fell away from cold fingers.

And now you can see them, those two figures, running by the train, their hair caught on the wind. See them with their dewy hair, their beautiful smiles, locked in their eternal night. They run, they swing towards the sky, drifting through stars and moments. And now they're falling, they're falling down into memories and space and lives and time and everything.

And this time they won't let go of each other.


End file.
